To keep order in your home, try these 12 daily habits
A house that remains perfectly tidy is just a dream for most of us, and especially for those who have large families.
Maintaining order at home is important to gain balance in your life, allowing you more space, time and freedom to do truly important, meaningful things.
Most of us believe that maintaining order in our homes is a tiring and time-consuming chore. But, in reality, carrying out a few simple daily tasks will be enough to keep order. Adopting a few simple daily habits will allow you to keep your home neat and tidy - and especially if these same habits are also adopted by the family members.
Want to find out more? Well, below, we suggest 12 useful daily habits you could consider adopting:
1. Washing the dishes
Doing the dishes and immediately putting them away is an excellent daily habit. None of us wants to be greeted by a mountain of dirty crockery when we wake up in the morning. So, tidy up the kitchen immediately after having your meals.
2. Take out the garbage regularly
Another common source of mess in your home are constantly-full garbage and trash cans. Not only are they ugly to behold, but they also give off an unpleasant smells that make your home feel (and look) dirtier and messier. Get into the habit of taking out the garbage regularly.
3. The dot rule for documents
Documents, bills and mail in general often piles up on tables and furniture tops without us realizing it. How often do you never even open the mail? Eliminate this clutter by dedicating a bit of time each day to sorting the mail. Put a small dot in pen in the top right-hand corner of each document you need to deal with. You can then bin the rest. Now you will only have a pile of "dotted" mail to administer (and which you can file neatly in binders).
4. Put away clothes, coats and bags
Place a closet (or similar) at your entryway that coats, bags, scarves and hats can be put in as soon as people enter the house. This stops these items from being flung over chairs, sofas and armchairs and creating a chaotic mess.
With clean linen, put it away in cupboards and drawers as soon as it dries. Avoid leaving linen on the clothesline for too long or finding a heap of linen on the bed at bedtime.
5. Keep less stuff
It may seem trivial, but there's no easier way to keep a home tidy than by owning fewer possessions. Having fewer objects will mean not only having more space, but also having to spend less time cleaning and tidying them up. Throw away whatever you don't use and, if you tend to buy more than you need, try to curb this impulse. By doing so, your wallet will thank you too!
6. One in, one out
To help you with above tip, adopt a "one in, one out" rule: every time you buy a new object for your home, get rid of the equivalent old one. This way, you can avoid clutter from building up.
7. Storage choices
The way in which we arrange our objects and the choices we make about which objects to store outdoors or indoors, is important in determining how the home will look. You can make your home look tidier quickly by simply choosing to store items out of sight, behind cabinet/closet doors.
8. Messy hot-spots
Every home has its own peculiar messy hot-spots: it could be the entryway with too many coats and backpacks; the kitchen with utensils all over the place; the kid's bedrooms with the floors shrewn with toys. Take a tour of your home to determine what your messy hot-spots are and come up with ideas that will help you maintain order in these areas.
9. Put items away after use
When you use something or when you change clothes, avoid leaving these items lying around. It only takes a few seconds to put these items back where they belong.
10. Daily and weekly resets
Before going to bed, dedicate some time to a "daily reset" of your home: put away items that have been left out, clean the dishes and the kitchen counters, give your bathroom a quick clean, gather up the toys and straighten the pillows and carpets. This operation will only take a few minutes but when you wake up, you'll be glad you did it.
Do the same thing weekly too, dedicating a bit more time to the weekly reset for "deeper" cleaning up.
11. Find a place for everything
"A place of everything and everything in its place." This proverb says it all.
But what if you can't find a place to store an item? Then, it might be time to ask yourself if you really need it and consider throwing it away if you don't.
12. Involve the family
Involving the whole family in maintaining order is the last piece of advice we offer here, but certainly, it's not the least. Cleaning up will be in vain if your family does not cooperate and also adopt these habits. Involve each family member in this project, and get them used to cleaning up after themselves.
These habit that can be ingrained from an early age and it is important that your children learn, for example, to always put their toys away.
Which of these habits have you already adopted and which ones will you consider for the future?